Posted on 11/13/2007 1:40:53 PM PST by yoe
A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday.
"The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release.
The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day," airing on most network affiliates Tuesday night. The film is about a trial concerning intelligent design that took place in Dover, Pa., in 2005.
The guide claims to provide teachers with "easily digestible information to guide and support you in facing challenges to evolution."
In the booklet, teachers are instructed to use such discussion questions as: "Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?" The answer to that query is provided as: "Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently antireligious is simply false."
"This statement is simplistic and not neutral among different religions, and in that sense arguably inconsistent with Supreme Court teachings concerning neutrality," said attorney Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the institute.
"The Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that the government must maintain 'neutrality between religion and religion,'" said Randal Wenger, a Pennsylvania attorney who filed amicus briefs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School District case.
"Because the briefing packet only promotes religious viewpoints that are friendly towards evolution, this is not neutral, and PBS is encouraging teachers to violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," Wenger added.
In its news release, the Discovery Institute indicates that it has enlisted more than a dozen attorneys and legal scholars, including Wenger, to review the PBS teaching guide with an eye to its constitutionality.
"The PBS materials, in suggesting that students need not be concerned that evolution violates their religion, ironically equip public school teachers to violate our current conception of the First Amendment by explicitly teaching students concerning matters of religious belief," Wenger said.
"The irony is that discussing intelligent design would not teach any student about any religious belief - the PBS materials, on the other hand, will," he said.
Luskin noted that the teaching guide also presents false information about the theory of intelligent design.
"The teaching guide is also riddled with factual errors that misrepresent both the standard definition of intelligent design and the beliefs of those scientists and scholars who support the theory," the attorney added.
As a result, the institute is providing its own guide for educators, "The Theory of Intelligent Design," which will help teachers better understand the debate between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.
Cybercast News Service previously reported that in December 2004, parents in Dover filed the first-ever challenge to intelligent design being taught in public schools, claiming it violated their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.
Just over a year later, U.S. District Judge John Jones III ruled that the school system may not include intelligent design in its science curriculum because intelligent design is not a scientific concept.
Telephone calls and e-mails seeking a response from the Public Broadcasting System were not returned by press time. However, on the PBS Web site, the program is described as capturing "the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pa., in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools."
"Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants - including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers and town officials - 'Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial' follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District," the site states.
"In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design - the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent," the Web site says.
"The teachers refused to comply," it adds.
"'Judgment Day' captures on film a landmark court case with a powerful scientific message at its core," said Paula Apsell, NOVA's senior executive producer. "Evolution is one of the most essential, yet - for many people - least understood of all scientific theories, the foundation of biological science."
"We felt it was important for NOVA to do this program to heighten the public understanding of what constitutes science and what does not and, therefore, what is acceptable for inclusion in the science curriculum in our public schools," Apsell said.
Nevertheless, Discovery Institute attorney Casey Luskin disagreed that the program is just about science.
"PBS gives a false definition of intelligent design that is a complete straw man argument," Luskin said. "Scientists who support intelligent design seek evidence of design in nature, and argue that such evidence points to intelligent design, based on our historical knowledge of cause and effect."
"So intelligent design theory is not an argument based on what we don't know, but rather an argument about what we do know," he said.
If it is the latter you should really use the term ‘kind’ as in “No two kinds can interbreed”. I wouldn’t have objected to that statement. Your statement however was demonstrably false, showing complete ignorance of the subject matter. Par for the course for people on the Cre/I.D. side unfortunately. It might help to know the very basic rudiments of an idea before you go around saying it is wrong, and making absolutely false statements about the possibility of species interbreeding.
Different species interbreeding is a very small part of evolution anyway, mostly in plants from what I know. So why display your abject ignorance about interbreeding species when throwing aspersions upon the theory of evolution through natural selection? I guess when you don’t know what the target is, or what it does, or where it is, you just spray bullets around hoping you hit something. Well all you did was shoot yourself in the foot with a statement that species cannot interbreed.
Can you tell me the success rate of breeding a lion with a tiger? What are the chances of its offpring living long enough to reproduce? Perhaps 1 in 500,000? Your lion and tiger example is weak.
You said it was impossible. Now it is just a weak example? I guess a weak example of something that you claim is impossible doesn’t discount the idea that it was impossible in the first place? First your own definitions for words, now a new system of logic. I like it!
Answer the question please. Is it not true that the odds are 1 in 500,000 that the offspring of a lion and tiger will survive to mature? 1 in 500,000 is long odds and is not a convincing argument especially when in the context of evolution. I don’t see where evolution can take place here when the odds of a hybrid maturing equals 1 in 500,000.
If they can they are. If it is difficult they are not?
What do you think species interbreeding has to do with evolution through natural selection? Can you answer that one for me?
The Constitution is a historical document. You didn't get the memo?
Oh, knock it off with the unconstitutional stuff already. The Constitution specifically provides, in direct terms, for a military. Make your point in some other fashion. What you're doing isn't cutting it.
Get with the program here friend, the constitution takes a back seat to the technocracy.
Would you do me the kindness of explicitly quoting the actual text of the lie you object to? From whatever source (so long as you identify said source)?
I'd be most grateful.
And this is the heart of it. The Constitution, specifically the First Amendment, was constructed to protect religious expression (the right of conscience, or ‘free exercise’) and to prohibit its banishment from the public square. Just the opposite of what we are witnessing now. The intent was to expel from the federal government the predominance of any one Christian denomination over others in the allocation of tax monies or in the granting of other special considerations, so that none would go to any, not to deny all access to the public square. The Founding Fathers never, even for a moment, entertained the peculiar idea that religion (‘moral instruction’) had no place in government, but simply that one denomination could not be favored over the rest.
”But a curious thing has happened on the way to the education system becoming the missionary of atheism on the public dole, empowered by the judiciary – the parents have started pulling their kids out. Evidently not so much because of the atheism but the teaching of politics and immorality (gay activism) – pressuring the children with “don’t tell your parents, but…””
Just as in the late Eighteenth Century the people objected to being taxed to support the ministers of a church different than their own, and their children being baptized in a church different from theirs. So religious establishment was denied from the federal government, and was done away with in the states over the first fifty years of the Union.
Can’t give you the specific text in the court transcript, but there were two major deceptions uncovered. One involved claiming the ‘Pandas’ text was offered from an anonymous source when the principal and the ‘purchaser’ on the city council knew that was not true, AND claiming the presentation of the ‘Panda’ text purchase was unknown to the principal when he in fact made an appeal for funds in his Church and asked the ‘business associate’ member on the school board(!) to make the purcahse and send the texts anonymously ... and the board member testified in the hearing before the judge without revealing his involvement as the argument was formulated as ‘from an anonymous donor.’ I would guess both deceptions are identifiable in the court record of the trial/hearings, though the convoluted nature of these deceptions makes it more than a mere statement that can be cited as false and perjury. The two men set out to deceive the court and nearly accomplished it to influence the outcome of the hearings.
Article One. Section Eight. Clause Eight; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; . . .
The Constitution grants Congress the enumerated power to issue patents and copyrights. It does not extend any further powers with respect to education other than a limited power to indirectly aid the states in supporting higher education, as found in Article VI, the First Clause.
Quote mining the Constitution! A common practice these last seventy years.
Jefferson weeps.
Oh . . . Sorry. { 8^D
The Constitution is a historical document. Full of quaint notions and obsolete ideas, it is no longer anything more than an object of curiosity.
Is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” a quote mine because I didn’t include the preliminary “a well regulated militia” or the conclusory “shall not be infringed”? It was for the sake of brevity, not an intention to deceive, I would hope that any true Conservative would be able to recognize the relevant section.
My point was that all the practices of the government of these United States will not align themselves with the religious sensibilities of all of its citizens. This does not in any way make the actions of the government of these United States an Unconstitutional abridgment of these citizens religious liberty. They are free to pray for an end to war, cry that the world is only 6,000 years old, claim Social Security numbers as the number of the Beast, and that Fluoride in the water will contaminate our precious bodily fluids. But that doesn’t make not kowtowing to their sensibilities an Unconstitutional abridgment of their religious liberty.
Among the limited enumerated powers of the Federal Government is the mandate to promote the Arts and Sciences, and yes, the specific power granted for this goal is the issuance of exclusive rights for a limited time.
Jefferson I think would be amazed that we lasted this long in any form, that we had a relatively peaceful coexistence after slavery was ended, and a dearth of the periodic revolutions that Jefferson envisioned. I think he would also be proud that we have become the preeminent world power without becoming an expansionist empire, but a fairly benevolent force for good and the spread and support of democracy and opposition to totalitarianism. I think he would be more proud than prone to tears if his shade were free to contemplate such things.
highball, the Pattee excerpt was not in defense of the Discovery Institute but rather to illustrate my point: "pot kettle black."
To paraphrase Pattee, biologists and physicists have an irreconcilable philosophical difference.
Think of a paint-by-number board as a metaphor for a theory, in this case, the theory of evolution. To see the picture, paint (data) is placed in its designated places on the board (theory).
The biologist is concerned with the paint. He is not concerned with the board, it is a given. If a designated place in the "sky" calls for red, that's where red goes.
The physicist is concerned with the board. It is the point of what he does. If the designated place in the "sky" calls for red, he would say "not so fast, check that number" - in this place, the "sky" should be blue.
So while the biologists accuse the Discovery Institute of having an agenda, fitting data into a preconceived [Creation] scenario - here we have the reverse, the biologists being accused of doing the same thing.
Thanks, MHGinTN. That’s a great example.
The DI got more exposure than they bargained for in the trial.
Almost certainly, Franklin would be amazed. But the United States has been remarkably stable over time because of its widely-shared unifying core philosophy, which is essentially Christian to its core. We are not speaking of sectarian religion here, but the essential truths of Christianity that all Christian sects espouse. That unifying core is precisely what has been coming under attack over the past several decades, with the attempts to "kill God," remove "religion" from the public square, and characterize Christians as dim, superstitious, anti-science weirdos. [Need I add that this is mainly the work of the atheist "progressive" Left, conning the American public into selling their own heritage and birthright? Guess why they would want us to do that....]
Consider this, from Ellis Sandoz:
As Perry Miller remarked decades ago, the American Revolution was preached as a revival and had the astonishing result of succeeding. A new generation of scholars is concluding that Miller was right. At the center of attitudes lay a kind of consensual Christianity that unified all denominations. It joined with Whig political views to give a resonant core of love of liberty and courageous resistance to tyranny and corruption to a great moral and political cause as the heartbeat of the American community. Federalist No. 2 reflects this, and it is wonderfully stated by John Adams in a letter to Jefferson late in life. Adams wrote to his fellow "Argonaut" of the American founding in their declining years, and he asked--
"Who composed that Army of fine young fellows that was then before my eyes [during the American Revolution]? There were among them, Roman Catholicks, English Episcopalians, Scotch and American Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists, German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Universalists, Arians, Priestleyans, Socinians, Independents, Congregationalists, Horse Protestants, House Protestants, Deists and theists; and [Protestants who believe nothing]. Very few however of several of these Species. Never the less all educated in the general Principles of Christianity: and the general Principles of English and American Liberty.Sandoz is Professor Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University and Director, Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies. The above was excerpted from his "AMERICAN RELIGION AND HIGHER LAW: HIGHER THAN WHAT?," April 26, 1997."The general Principles, on which the Fathers atchieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen could unite.... And what were these general Principles? I answer [John Adams wrote]-- the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and those principles of Liberty, as unalterable as human nature and the terrestrial, mundane system" (Letter of Adams to Jefferson, June 28, 1813).
It has become fashionable lately to say that Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson were "privately" very anti-religion. Indeed, we have many champions of this view here at FR. But if this is so, then these people need to explain why Thomas Jefferson would have engraved on his personal seal the motto, "Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God."
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